


warm and salt, like the sea

by singmyheart



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hospitals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:23:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singmyheart/pseuds/singmyheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his dreams, the people he loves are dead or dying. In hers, they cut out her tongue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	warm and salt, like the sea

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in like an hour bc of fucking course i can't just finish the half million fics i have started

 

 

 

 

_i didn’t want any flowers, i only wanted_  
 _to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty._  
 _how free it is, you have no idea how free—_  
 _the peacefulness is so big it dazes you,_  
 _and it asks nothing_

_\--_

When Will is awake he does not look at Alana; he looks instead at the tubes in his arms, the passing figures in cheerfully coloured scrubs in the hallway, counts the ceiling tiles in his head. He looks at the tiled floor, scrubbed bright, the pattern of Hannibal’s pocket square, anywhere but her eyes. So when he is asleep, defenses down, she looks at him: the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, eyelashes resting light against his cheek. The low and constant hum of the machines is her only company when Jack and Hannibal are not – no, that’s often the case even when they are. They talk in tones that aren’t quite hushed, not like Will is on his deathbed, just careful, like he’s delicate. Alana wants desperately to just make noise, be _loud_ , scream, break the suffocating, constant quiet. And, yet, perversely, she finds herself wanting when she goes home: she turns her TV to a dead channel, and the white noise of the static lulls her into a fitful sleep that can’t be any better than Will’s: in his dreams, he tells her once, the people he loves are dead or dying. In hers, they cut out her tongue.

\--

Once when she goes to visit, someone’s brought him flowers; tulips that sit vivdly orange and garish in their vase, almost mocking the stark, impersonal hospital cleanliness. “They’re pretty,” she says, to say something. And then: she doesn’t want to ask, but hears her own voice as if from far away – “How are you feeling?”

He looks at the ceiling while she cringes and says, measured and recitative in the way he gets sometimes, “It is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.”

Alana recognizes the weight in his tone that means he’s quoting something, but doesn’t ask what, bites down hard enough on the inside of her cheek that she won’t be able to resist probing the teeth marks with her tongue later. She will not realize until much later that she is making a point of only falling apart in places he can’t see her, keeping her gloves on to hide the reddened skin around her fingernails that she’s picked at to the point of bleeding.

\--

When Jack and Hannibal come to see him, they pull their chairs toward the foot of Will’s bed, maintaining careful, if not wholly professional, distances. Most of the time both are as impassable as ever, but Alana catches them every so often, the cracks in their composure betrayed by throats cleared a little too loudly, voices pitched a little differently than usual, like they're trying too hard for normalcy.

This couple of feet, this harmless, casual distance, makes her skin prickle and she tamps down the urge, again, to scream. She takes to perching casually on the end of the mattress by Will’s knees while they talk, but only when she’s the only one there. It feels wrong, somehow, to do in front of Jack and Hannibal, like breaching the limits they’ve set for themselves in regard to Will. He’s tense, initially, every time, but after an hour or so starts to relax, if it can be called that. His skin is always cold through the thin layers of his pajamas and the scratchy hospital blanket.

They talk about nothing in particular.

\--

She brings him a quilt from home, bundling it up in her arms as she walks briskly through the hospital parking lot, head down against the cold, the hems of her jeans dampening with slush. She’s had it for years, doesn’t remember where she got it, even. It’s done in deep blues and purples and it clashes with his sallow skin. She unfolds it with a flourish, settles it over his legs and reads him Flannery O’Connor.

When she glances at him, in the middle of turning a page, she sees his place has been taken by a pale, dark-haired girl with a half-healed gash at her throat, face open and unguarded in sleep. Alana’s so rattled for a moment, jarred so violently by the fierceness of the memory and the weight with which it hits her, that her voice cracks, she stumbles over a sentence and has to stutter to a halt, close her eyes and breathe. Will’s been listening, half-asleep, he reaches for her shaking hand when he hears the book snap shut. “You okay?” he murmurs.

“I will be,” she answers after a moment; it’s only half a lie. His thumb brushes the thin skin of her wrist, back and forth, while she breathes deep, wills her heart to slow down. Once the wracking tremors have calmed and before she can think about it, Alana moves, pulls her feet up and curls up next to him, tucked in close. It surprises him and he jerks away from her, just a little, at first, but he relaxes once he realizes what she’s doing. Will gestures for her to rest her head on his chest, and she does so; it’s a little awkward and strangely calming in this bed, too small, antiseptic-scented and unfamiliar. They do a little shifting, elbowing each other, until they end up settled on their sides, facing each other like closed parentheses. She toes off her shoes, lets them drop softly to the floor, one, and then two. His eyelashes tickle her face when he blinks, and when she lets her palm rest against the curve of his side, tentatively, his skin is warm. 


End file.
